ESSEX: Dame Nellie's historic broadcast 90 years ago celebrated

By peter baker newsdesk@essexchronicle.co.uk

CHELMSFORD commemorated its place in the modern world on Saturday with wireless calls across the globe – echoing the first entertainment broadcast in history by opera diva Dame Nellie Melba exactly 90 years ago.

Members of Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society (CARS) put out a simple message across the world's airwaves.

This honoured the day that Dame Nellie – then the world's foremost soprano – proved that wireless, developed by Marconi and transformed into reality in his Chelmsford

factory, could be used for more than sending Morse code blips.

Click here to hear some recordings and news from that seminal moment.

It was made through a microphone made from an old cigar box.

Up to then, experimental voice broadcasts had included only readings from the Great Eastern Rail timetable.

But Daily Mail boss Lord Northcliffe decided to back Marconi's voice experiment and paid Dame Nellie £8,000 – about £240,000 in today's money – for her famous 15-minute broadcast.

The event was granted a special General Post Office licence GB90MZX, and today's modern Ofcom granted the same licence for Saturday's event from the new annexe of Chelmsford Museum, in Oaklands Park, Old Moulsham.

Dame Nellie was handed a first-class rail ticket from London and collected in a white Rolls Royce for the two-minute trip to the world's first-ever purpose-built radio factory in New Street.

Contemporary historian Asa Briggs wrote: "In the presence of a distinguished audience, Dame Nellie sang arias in English, French and Italian, beginning with a long silvery trill which she described as her hello to the world."

Reportedly, she was heard all over Europe and recorded on to disc in a radio room beneath the Eiffel Tower.

Asa said: "The broadcast was the turning point in public response and caught people's imagination."

A string of CARS members were on hand on Saturday to keep the messages sizzling through the airwaves from 10am to 5pm.

Atmospherics pinged signals to Europe in the morning but contacts with Canada, Australia and the US were made in the afternoon.